The Art and Craft of approaching your head of department to submit a request for a raise

In a letter to Louise Colet, Flaubert expressed his wish to write a book about nothing, a book that would be held together by the mutual tension of its component parts rather than by its correspondence to any real world.

This is what aptly describes Georges Perec’s small novel  entitled ‘The art and craft of approaching your head of department to submit a request for a raise’.

Georges Perec(1936-82) is a writer of acrostics,anagrams,autobiography poetry, plays and so on. He famously wrote a whole novel without using the letter ‘e’(The Void).

Along with Italo Calvino andRamaond Queneau, he belonged to a movement called ‘oulipo.’ Founded in 1960 this literary movement has a number of mathematicians too as its members that seek to create ‘new structures and patterns which may be used by writers’ in any way they like.

Perec was thrown a challenge of using a computer’s basic mode of operation as a writing device , procedure was sketched out that an employee would need to follow to obtain an increase in pay in some large organization. Then it was broken down into individual steps and laid the procedure out as algorithm , or flow chart. Perec accepted the challenge wrote the book ’The art and craft of approaching your head of department to submit a request for a raise’.

There is no clear cut storyline  in the book as it seems a low level functionary of a large organization summons up courage to meet his head of department to request for a raise. But in the process he seems to have followed the flow chart and ultimately he never reaches his HOD.

The book is a long sentence as there is no comma or full stop. Sentences are refrains and are often convoluted as in page number 40.  I quote:’…you know that he knows that you know and he knows you know that he knew that you saw that he would know that you were about to know…’

As in the Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock the song was never sung , likewise this low level functionary of a large corporate house could never meet his HOD to submit a request for a raise. Like a bull in a press, he simply follows the flow chart and reaches nowhere.

The book is a delightful and intellectually enriching reading experience